Terence Blacker: Things to do with Jordan's old implants

Heartbreakingly, news of the ultimate gift of the moment has been announced just too late for the great present-giving orgy of the year. Jordan is planning to auction her breast implants on eBay. All proceeds of the sale will, naturally, be going to charity.

It appears that the former model who is now a celebrity novelist has reached a tipping point in her life. Until now, she has augmented her body surgically at regular intervals. Now, "to beat gravity," she says, she is taking the deflationary route. After her husband, Peter Andr, gave her a reverse boob-job as a Christmas present, she realised that it was time to give something back to her fans and to good causes. Her second-hand breasts were what she chose.

The implants may not be such a unique investment as they appear. Now that Jordan is making a belated bid for normality "You can't beat natural beauty," she says other objects of enhancement are likely to be pulled out of her body and made available in the future. Presumably, once this new area of trade becomes established, eBay will have to open a new category, "Breasts, Buttocks and Other Internal Accessories" to which surgically enhanced celebrities will take their unwanted body parts.

At first, these bits will be innocent trophies in a few weeks' time, Jordan's implants will probably be mounted and framed and will have pride of place above the fireplace in the home of one of her fans. But soon, as more and more famous people look to sell off what used to be hospital waste, the new practicality, the urge to recycle and reuse, will begin to take effect.

For example, as we enter the time of the year when the thoughts of the practically minded turn to DIY and home repair, those implants of Jordan's may catch the eye. What better way could there be of protecting your knees while kneeling on a hard, stone floor than to use them as pads? The peculiar, rather warlike globes which Victoria Beckham has chosen to wear on her front must surely be approaching their sell-by date. They could be the perfect solution to that door which bangs so noisily against the wall.

There will be an accelerating supply of body parts for this newest area of second-hand trading. Augmentation is the great growth industry of the moment. Now that the famous cheerfully admit to undergoing surgery in order to look younger than they are, thousands of ordinary, dissatisfied, imperfect people will be looking to the latest procedures in a doomed quest to deny nature and hold back time. Once it was noses that were reshaped, then breasts. Something called the Brazilian Buttlift enjoyed a few months in vogue. Now there is no part of the body that cannot be made larger, smaller, straighter, rounder, firmer, perter.

All over the world, businesses will spring up to exploit this great new resource. Rhinoplasty is now so popular that an enterprising Third World artisan could perhaps use cast-off Hollywood noses to make a highly original Celebrity Nose Chess Set. A factory with an option on one of the stars who are forever producing a new, tighter model of their former selves Cher or Joan Rivers could keep going simply on their recycled parts.

This time next year, a new, smaller Jordan might be sitting on a liposuction-filled sofa, resting her lovely head on a cushion stuffed with Elton John's former hair-jobs. She will reflect, with some satisfaction, on what she had started. Thanks to her, celebrities will have donated their best, surgically enhanced features to make the world a better place.

Seasonal ill-will in academia

At this time of year, when friendships are frayed and family ties strained, here is a story from academia to warm the heart. Two eminent professors of philosophy, Ted Honderich and Colin McGinn, have gone public with a spat every bit as hilarious as a fall-out between two members of a boyband. Colin described Ted's new book as "shoddy, inept and disastrous" in the Philosophical Review. Ted, 74, say he was once rude about Colin's girlfriend and later referred to him as "my small colleague". Most grievously of all, he accused Colin of "wanting to be Martin Amis". The central disagreement is apparently about the nature of consciousness. As they say in philosophical circles: Yeah, right.

* Something else to worry about: people between the ages of 25 and 40 are not getting enough sex, and what they do get tends to be straight, tame, insipid and vanilla-flavoured.

There is, of course, a survey to back up this extraordinary claim. The American sociologist Edward Laumann has been sniffing through the private lives of the young for a book to be published next year. The so-called Generation X does have sex, he generously concedes, but "it's probably not as much or as varied in styles as their parents or today's teenagers and students".

There are some quotes from the UK to back up this story. Jamie Oliver boasts that he has never been unfaithful (watch out, Mrs Oliver) while Justin Lee of Channel 4's The Friday Night Project drearily intones: "I'd rather have a beer with my mates than swing from the rafters."

It is cheering that a new age of sexual seriousness and responsibility has broken out particularly for those us who missed it.

terblacker@aol.com